1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications services. More particularly, the present invention relates to capabilities that enhance substantially the value and usefulness of, for example, various wireless messaging paradigms (including, inter alia, Short Message Service [SMS], Multimedia Message Service [MMS], IP Multimedia Subsystem [IMS], etc.) through a gateway facility that offers, possibly among other things, flexible and extensible charging capabilities.
2. Background of the Invention
As the ‘wireless revolution’ continues to march forward the ability of a Mobile Subscriber (MS), for example a user of a Wireless Device (WD) such as a mobile telephone, BlackBerry, etc. that is serviced by an Operator, to fully and completely utilize their WD to partake of services within a truly ubiquitous cross-Operator environment grows in importance while, simultaneously, the challenges that are associated with same similarly increase.
As one specific example consider Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) which, broadly speaking, encompasses the buying and selling of Merchant-supplied products, goods, and services through WDs. A stylized, high-level depiction of a hypothetical M-Commerce environment 100 involving multiple Operators 102 and multiple Merchants 104 is presented in FIG. 1. Within an M-Commerce environment a number of factors—including, inter alia, the ever-expanding and rapidly changing universe of products/goods/services, the frequently low-value nature of those items, the practical aspects of a youth demographic (that include, for example, a lack of conventional credit cards), etc.—all contribute to the need for the separation of charging (rating, billing, etc.) activities from product/good/service delivery activities and, once separated, for the flexible, comprehensive, dynamic, sometimes non-intuitive, etc. processing and management of charging events.
Such a separation yields, among other things, a bearer-independent and delivery-agnostic charging platform that, inter alia, (a) uncouples all of the particulars of delivery from the myriad of activities, challenges, etc. of charging and (b) adds substantive value to each of the involved parties (including, for example, MS, Operator, Merchant, etc.).
The present invention facilitates aspects of such a separation and addresses various of the (not insubstantial) challenges that are associated with same.